~ Memoirs and Stories of Belzan

Makin’ Stuff

New post today from ANet about crafting. Lemmie tell you, I’ve been waiting for this one. There are 8 crafting disciplines (anyone else see a coincidence between the number of crafting disciplines and the number of professions?) and they seem pretty straightforward.

Tools of the trade

You are allowed to be proficient with only two disciplines at a time. According to ANet, this is to promote player interaction and the like. They’ve also implemented a way for you to change disciplines and change back for an in-game fee. That’s not too bad I guess. I plan to max several of them out on my main character (Belzan) but I’ve already got them assigned to all 8 of my characters (because I’m a nerd). I’m excited to learn about the “depth and size of each of [the] crafting professions.”

I haven’t had any experience with gathering or other crafting systems, so this is all relatively new to me. I’m glad ANet is accounting for some of the hangups from other systems (e.g., fighting over nodes and resources). Mostly though, I’m excited about exploring this system altogether. It was something I really wanted from GW and prolly 90% of my weapons in GW are self-crafted rather than greens.

Finally, I’m excited about exploring the crafting side of Belzan’s story. He wasn’t quite an armorsmith, but he frequently crafted magical (staves, wands, etc) and non-magical (swords, axes, etc) weapons for others. I see Belzan as an adequate crafter (e.g., woodworker, tanner, blacksmith, etc) and a master enchanter. He will likely be my primary artificer or jewelcrafter in GW2.

[EDIT]: There is an interview with Andrew McLeod over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun that you should check out. They talk recipe rarity, gear crafting, and trade. There’s also a pic of the crafting UI.